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David Collins
| aliases = | film = | franchise = Dark Shadows | image = | notability = | type = | race = Human | gender = | base of operations = Collinwood, Collinsport, Maine | associations = Collins family | known relatives = Roger (father) Elizabeth (aunt) Carolyn (cousin) Barnabas (ancestor) | born = 1960 | died = | 1st appearance = House of Dark Shadows (1970) | final appearance = | actor = David Henesy Gulliver McGrath }} ' David Collins ' is a fictional child and a supporting character in the 1970 American horror film House of Dark Shadows. He is based on the character of David Collins seen in the original 1960s daytime Gothic soap opera, Dark Shadows. The character is played by actor David Henesy. The character was re-imagined for the 2012 Dark Shadows feature film where he was played by actor Gulliver McGrath. House of Dark Shadows David Collins was the son of Roger Collins and lived at the family estate, Collinwood in Collinsport, Maine. When David was ten-years-old, Roger hired a young woman from Boston named Maggie Evans to work at Collinwood as a governess to young David. David was a troublesome child and was prone to test Maggie's nerves by playing various cruel pranks upon her. In June of 1970, David created a harness and pretended to hang himself from the closet of his bedroom. Maggie discovered him and shrieked in horror, believing the boy to be dead. She ran downstairs to alert his father and aunt, Elizabeth Stoddard. When they arrived in David's room, they found the closet empty. David had fooled her yet again. That same evening, David turned up missing. Roger wanted the boy found, but had little interest in actually searching for him himself. He instructed Maggie Evans to patrol the grounds of the estate and find him. Maggie eventually walked over to the ruins of the original family mansion, commonly referred to as the Old House. She knew that David liked to play there, and in all likelihood, that was where he could be found. Indeed, David was at the Old House and he locked Maggie inside one of the upstairs bedrooms. He raced back to Collinwood and tried to get to his room unnoticed. Maggie's boyfriend, Jeff Clark caught him trying to sneak back into the house. Shortly thereafter, David suffered the greatest trauma of his young life. A vampire began terrorizing Collinsport, and had murdered his cousin, Carolyn. David tried to put forth a strong façade at Carolyn's funeral, but the shock of her death left a permanent scar upon him. After the funeral, David went down to the empty remains of the old indoor swimming pool. He began bouncing a tennis ball off of the concrete walls singing, "If I catch this one – Carolyn isn't dead". As luck would have it, he was partially right. Carolyn Stoddard had risen from the grave as one of the undead. She appeared before David in the gloom of the swimming pool and began beckoning him. David feared that Carolyn intended him harm, and raced back to the main house. He excitedly exclaimed that Carolyn was alive, but the rest of the family dismissed his ravings as the byproduct of extreme grief. A few weeks later, the identity of the vampire was discovered. It was his distant relative, Barnabas Collins. Barnabas was eventually destroyed, but not after he had managed to kill several more people including David’s father. House of Dark Shadows (1970) David left Collinwood shortly after this calamity. Where David went, and under what circumstances, has never been revealed Night of Dark Shadows (1971) Dark Shadows | aliases = | film = | franchise = | image = | notability = Supporting character | type = | race = Human | gender = Male | base of operations = Collinwood, Collinsport, Maine | associations = Collins family | known relatives = Roger Collins Unnamed mother Elizabeth Collins Stoddard Carolyn Stoddard Barnabas Collins | status = Alive | born = 1960s | died = | 1st appearance = Dark Shadows | final appearance = | actor = Gulliver McGrath }} When David was only five years old, his mother Laura was tragically lost at sea. However, she literally watches over him in spirit and communicates with him frequently. Unfortunately, this causes the other members of his family to think he is suffering from delusions, and they hire Dr. Julia Hoffman, a live-in psychiatrist, for a month to help him recover from his mothers death. She ends up staying for three years. David first appears in the film costumed as a "ghost," having cut holes in a bedsheet draped over him with the intention of scaring his governess, whom he apparently has not met prior to the incident. As his surprise is spoiled by his being prematurely exposed, he joins the others at the dining table. It is revealed that David believes he sees ghosts, specifically the spirit of his deceased mother. Dr. Hoffman notes that David believes his late mother to be "some sort of cyclic immortality," presumably an allusion to the original series character, Laura Collins, who had been depicted as a human phoenix. When the film's key protagonist Barnabas Collins arrives at the Collins manor, Collinwood, David is the first member of the family to greet and introduce himself to Barnabas, whereas others, such as David's 15-year-old cousin Carolyn and her mother, Elizabeth Stoddard, initially find the unexpected visitor strange and frightening. Later, when Carolyn expresses a desire for Barnabas not to linger as a guest, David readily remarks, "I like him!" David's opposition to Carolyn's teenage antipathy toward Barnabas may in part be a result of the rivalry between the two cousins (Carolyn refers to David as a "weirdo," warning new governess Victoria that "none of the others have lasted a week," while David announces to the family that Carolyn "touches herself and she sounds like a kitten!"). It seems likely from subsequent events in the film, however, that David genuinely finds Barnabas sympatico, someone like himself who is in touch with the supernatural and is thus viewed as peculiar by more conventional people. Later, Victoria tells Barnabas confidentially that David has begun to idolize him, and Barnabas confronts David's father, Roger, to demand that he either behave as a real parent to the boy or get out of Collinwood. After Roger's abandonment of David, Barnabas uses supernatural agility to save David from a heavy falling object, but in doing so his strange, vampiric nature is more obviously exposed as he inadvertently stumbles into bright sunlight and begins to burst into flame. Though Barnabas suffers no permanent effect, this inescapable manifestation of his strange nature causes David, as well as Victoria (with whom Barnabas has developed a budding romance), to temporarily reconsider their affections for Barnabas. Though he is the youngest and seemingly most vulnerable of the Collins clan, David performs two pivotal heroic acts in the film. First, he rescues Barnabas from peril after the recently freed vampire's centuries-old lover-nemesis Angelique Bouchard has once again chained him in his coffin and apparently left him to languish indefinitely. Secondly, after Angelique rallies the townspeople to demand the arrest of the Collins family and then supernaturally attacks the family inside their home, with witchcraft, David summons his mother Laura's powerful spirit to battle and ultimately destroy Angelique after the witch has the elder Collinses on the verge of defeat and Collinwood itself in flames. David survives Angelique's attack upon Collinwood and is last seen standing alongside his Aunt Elizabeth, cousin Carolyn, and the family retainers, Willie Loomis and Mrs. Johnson, as the survivors look on as their home continues to burn and they speculate about what they will do next. Notes * The character of David Collins was created by director Dan Curtis and writers Sam Hall and Gordon Russell. * In the continuity of the original Dark Shadows television series, David's mother was Laura Collins. The identity of his mother in House of Dark Shadows has never been revealed. In Dark Shadows, David's mother is presented as a siren. In the original series, she was a phoenix. * In the television show, Victoria Winters was David's governess during the early Barnabas Collins storyline, and not Maggie Evans. By the time of the filming of House of Dark Shadows, Alexandra Moltke had left the series and Maggie Evans had been hired as David's governess in the story. The script for the film reflected the then-current cast situation on the series. See also External Links * * David Collins at Horror Film Wiki * References Category:1960/Character births